14
MAGAZINE
5 MINUTES WITH...
Lili Cuellar & Willie Soto
Early Beginnings
Q: When did your cake journey begin?
A: Lili: We both finished our college studies
in 2009. Willie studied culinary arts and found
his vocation during his first pastry classes.
But after school, his first job was in a regular
restaurant kitchen as a commis chef. He always
knew he wanted to be a cake designer but it
wasn't until a year and a half after school that
he decided to start his dream, taking cake
decorating classes in Mexico where we met
for the first time. My story is a bit different; I
studied business administration in Switzerland
and after my mum got sick, I had to come back
to Mexico to take care of her. When she passed
away, my dad reminded me how short life is to
waste time doing things we don't like. That was
the moment I started taking cake decorating
classes in 2010 because I've always been
obsessed with culinary arts. Pastry, besides
everything, got me and I fell in love with this
fabulous artistic world.Life Before Cake
Q: What did you do previously to cake?
A: Willie: We always say we started very
young in this world. I was 23 when I decided to
leave the stress inside a kitchen and start my
journey into cake decorating and Lili was 23 as
well when she left her job in hotel management
in Switzerland. We both fell in love with each
other after a year being friends and working
together selling cupcakes in Lili's garage,
advertising ourselves with a cupcake drawing
on cardboard stuck to her front door haha. It
is amazing to look back and see how far we've
been together. We have been making cakes
properly since 2011 when VanilleCouture was
born.Inspiration
Q: What inspires your designs?
A: We know this will sound like something you
can read anywhere but when you are open (and
well rested), you can get inspired by everything
in life. You simply find many inspiring sources
like pieces of art, ceramic textures, nice
restaurant restroom tiles, illustrations, etc. In
our classes, we always encourage students to
take time for themselves to get inspired by life
itself, hang out with friends, visit new places
and go to dinner at a new restaurant once in a
while.Trending Cakes
Q: What do you feel is trending at the moment
in the cake world?
A: Buttercream cakes! We feel our feeds areFind out more about VanilleCouture and
their work:
http://www.facebook.com/vanillecouture.cakeshop
Instagram @vanillecouturefull of beautiful buttercream
cakes. Sprinkles but also
textures on cakes are
very trendy these days.
When we started making
cakes, cookies were not
the most popular goods,
at least in Mexico. But
nowadays, we have more
and more people asking
for decorated cookies
classes.Social Media
Q: How important is
social media to your business?
A: In 2012, we had a store front for two years
but we found most people who arrived wanted
to order a cake to take away in that moment and
we usually asked for two weeks in advance for
every order. In 2014, we decided it wasn't our
thing because of that and because most of the
orders we received came from Facebook. That
was the moment we decided to move to the
private studio where we work right now and
receive clients by appointment on our private
terrace. The studio is well illuminated (we didn't
have that in our store) and this new step in our
career gave us the freedom to teach classes
nationally and internationally, all thanks to social
media. We started with Facebook but it has
been a year and a half since we started to focus
on Instagram and thanks to that, we started to
receive many foreign clients who want to get
married in Mexico.Picture Perfect
Q: We love your finished cake pictures – how do
you style your final photos?
A: We looove super clean finishes on our cakes
therefore we try to reflect that in the style of our
photos. We hired a professional photographer to
teach us how to reach good quality photos (we
really recommend this for those who want to
improve their photos, it is totally worth it). He
taught us the basics of photography and then we
started to play with that knowledge to reach the
style you see on our Instagram. When we started,
we only took photos with a white background
but since our studio is all teal, we started to play
with this colour as a background as well. We are
always changing the way we take photos and
learning by ourselves after that class we took,
but we simply love it! We are not professional
photographers but we really enjoy playing
around with our Canon professional camera to
reach better photos every time.